For You
by Acey Dearest
Summary: Matt kept his door unlocked, though, always prepared for the times Mello would storm back in and sit on what had been his bed... spoilers up to chapter 83.


"For You"

by Acey

Death Note took my heart, and then threw it from the top floor of the Empire State Building. Three times. Nevertheless, expect the usual—spoilers up to chapter eighty-three.

The closest gas station was a mile and a half from his trailer. He went there twice as often as necessary; winding through the aisles in prison stripes and making the gas station girl (red hair in curls, "Cindy" on her nametag) blink at his presence.

"Matt! Hey, it's you! Sixteen dollars and thirty-eight cents," she said, and he smiled vaguely and started to open his billfold.

"Yeah. All right." His eyes darted suddenly away from her face. "Wait—could you ring one more thing up for me?"

"Be glad to!"

She grinned widely in return, pink gums overpowering her teeth.

"Just this, is all."

He dropped a chocolate bar on the counter.

"Then it's seventeen dollars and one cent," she chirped, and he handed her the money and left.

--

He ate the candy in the car.

Nostalgia was an unpleasant tinge that rarely hit him but always compelled him to _do_ things. Odd things, inane, insane things that, somehow, would give him comfort after the deed was done, even if everyone else was looking at him funny for weeks afterwards.

A week after arriving at the orphanage, he had thought about his mother (tall and platinum blonde—_she _was Mommy to him and Angela to the boyfriends and _she_ called him Matthias) and wound up sneaking upstairs in the dead of night, searching the rooms for bottles of peroxide.

All that Matt managed to do was spill the peroxide bottle by the time Near had caught him, an almost-tired look on his pale face, and the hand not twirling his hair was drowsily grasping L's sleeve.

"I thought I'd heard something," Near said, but that was all before he silently walked back to his room, leaving L to deal with Matt.

To his credit, L didn't ask Matt why he'd done it (black, greasy hair, L was nothing but L to anyone at all), just pulled a towel from the cabinet and started to wipe it up, telling him that hopefully he could undo most of the damage by washing his hair in the sink. If he wanted, he could talk to Wammy and there would be an appointment scheduled to dye his hair professionally.

Matt shook his head, face burning, unwilling to admit to L that he'd been too afraid to pour the peroxide just then, that all that was on his hair was water and when he'd finally opened the bottle it had spilled, that was all.

"I'll take you back to your room, then," L said. "You're Mello's roommate, aren't you?" and Matt answered with a gloomy nod. Mello (year older than him, _real _blond hair, rosary on his neck and a perpetual irritated look on his face) would not be happy if he was woken up, even if L was there.

He followed L nervously, expecting a lecture or at least a warning for sneaking out at night, but only getting a wave from the older boy. L did not judge, did not question—he accepted the world for what it was and a six-year-old for what he was and that was enough for Matt.

"Wait... L... you solve the cases—don't you?"

L nodded.

"All the cases?"

"I try, Matt."

"Could you—could you solve mine?"

L gave Matt a small smile, his defenses down, and it took Matt years to completely realize that on that night, the detective had suspected nothing sinister, nothing real in what the child was about to tell him.

"You have a case for me?"

"Yes!" and Matt was wildly excited for a second, tilting his face up to L's, hair still dripping water on the varnished wood floor. "My... my mom. When I was four—she—she died and the police said she k-killed herself—but L, I-I _know_ that wasn't it! I know... I k-know..."

He searched L's face, but the expression had changed, wasn't that calm and comforting acceptance anymore.

Matt saw the look but rambled on, because this was his last chance and this was L, and he might finally make what had festered in his mind for two years all right.

"'Cause she told me so, L! She said that she wasn't going to go _anywhere_, not without me! But she died and it w-wasn't her, I know it w-wasn't her—"

"I'm sorry."

He _was_ sorry. Matt could tell, but still he glared hard at L, for that second despising him, hating him, calling him weak and stupid and all the awful words he could think of.

"Matt, I... I can't take that case."

--

Matt had held L in stubborn dislike for two weeks afterwards, only dropping it because it was difficult for him to bear a grudge like that any longer. He stuffed the incident in the back of his mind instead, along with a childish feeling that L had failed him.

He never told Mello about it—Mello would never believe him, anyway. L was Mello's hero, like Superman and Batman and Spiderman all rolled into one skinny, slumping frame.

"No," Mello corrected brazenly. "He's way better than that. 'Cause Superman and Batman and all of them are fake."

Matt considered as he made up his bed, trying to fluff the pillows. He saw Mello alternately wince and roll his eyes at him as he watched.

"How come?"

"Because someone just made them up—"

"No, not that." Matt glanced idly up at Mello's gigantic poster of the Virgin Mary surrounded by cherubs, an aura around her head. "I mean, why else is he better?"

"It's like—like this." Mello threw his pillow on his bed, a sorry attempt at passing room inspection. "Like—what's your favorite color?"

Matt blinked.

"Blue."

"I like red," Mello said unnecessarily (the Virgin on the wall was painted completely in violent shades of crimson, as was the cross on his neck and the book of prayers Matt had once found stuffed in a bureau, but never mentioned). "But anyway. Why is blue your favorite?"

"I don't know."

Mello grinned, a somewhat toothless barracuda. He'd told Matt that he'd lost his front teeth fighting his old roommate, and that was why up until Matt had come, he'd been the only one in the room. Matt believed him but privately hoped they'd been loose beforehand.

"That's what I figured. Okay, then: superheroes. Who's your favorite of them, huh?"

"Superman."

"Why Superman?"

Matt groaned.

"I don't know, Mello—"

"Well, there's your answer."

Mello plopped on top of the pillow, apparently satisfied with his own explanation.

"And quit fluffing that pillow, would you, Matt? That's freaking annoying to watch."

Matt stopped.

"But room inspection's right after lunch."

"Oh, what you don't know." Mello threw him another barracuda grin. "I've always been good at getting them off my back about that."

"Oh. Okay."

"So with any luck you can keep your side of the room as much of a pigsty as you want. I don't care, anyway."

"Oh."

"What, is that why you've kept it so clean?" Mello looked at him sideways. "If I did care I'd say something."

"Okay."

"You're seriously too quiet." Mello grumbled, got up, and began searching the bureau for chocolate. "You'll be good for espionage, then. I guess."

"What?"

"Espionage. You know, spying? Detectives need to be good at that."

"You're going to be a detective?"

Mello's chocolate bar was half gone already, and he made a face as he swallowed.

"Yeah."

--

At the age of ten with good grades (Matt never scraped more than a B at Wammy's and never really tried for more) an orphan could move into a room alone, which Mello did, without either Matt's blessing or cursing. They'd gotten along fine; were friends, even, but Matt was a poor influence on anyone wanting top grades.

He kept his door unlocked, though, always prepared for the times Mello would storm back in and sit on what had been his bed and stare at the wall like he expected the Virgin to still be pasted there. It was the same every time—Near (OCA1 albino, brilliant, imperious—Mello called him a damn bastard) had gotten a point higher on the Biology test, Near had been praised, Near had beaten him.

"My roommate's going to come back in a couple minutes, you know," Matt said over his geometry homework in the middle of one of Mello's tirades. "He'll want his bed."

Mello only kicked at the foot of the bed.

"I don't care. That Near… at least L doesn't like him."

Matt raised his eyebrows and stopped trying to get a decent answer on his homework problem, scrawling in a "3" and leaving it at that.

"How do you know that?"

"Well, how could he like him? How could anyone like him? He just sits there!"

"I guess the teachers—"

"Oh, he scares them, that's all there is to it."

Matt half-thought he would end up enduring eight years of anti-Near, but couldn't quite find it in his heart to mind.

--

But he hadn't. Mello had left when he was almost fifteen, telling him he'd solve the Kira case, solve it before Near could even think about it.

Matt had believed him.

"So do you need me for any of that?"

He'd tried to be nonchalant about it, tried to act like it didn't bother him, the way it hadn't mattered to Mello whether he kept a neat room or a pigsty. Or L, if he'd gotten up in the night because he remembered his mother, or his mother, if she'd lived or died, promises be damned—

"No."

Matt's face fell, unbidden.

"Not yet, at any rate. When I do, I'll find you, all right?"

"You mean it?"

"Of course I—"

He did. He did, he really did—Matt barely bit back the broad smile from his face, knowing that Mello was sincere.

"Okay. Okay. Good luck, Mello."

Mello grinned, straightened the crucifix on his rosary.

"Sure. You, too."

--

That had been almost four years before and Mello had not bothered to find him yet.

After Mello had left, Matt had pieced together what had happened, and come to his own biased conclusions. Of course, if Mello had known what was good for him, then maybe he would still be over in Winchester or London or wherever Near was—Matt really had no idea—but Mello's utter hate of Near unsurprisingly eclipsed the safety of justice. Matt figured Near must have known that from the start, anyway.

Matt couldn't quite understand but tried to act as if it didn't matter. Near never would need him—maybe Mello just didn't need him yet. Or maybe Mello had decided it was too dangerous—or something—and had been gracious enough to let him alone.

And that was how Matt left things, or pretended he left things. It was all okay—leave Kira to the professionals and stay in your trailer with your I.Q. of one hundred thirty-four, but remember L's was one hundred seventy-two, so flirt with your gas station girls while you can, dear heart, because maybe you're wrong and maybe Kira will win, after all—

(check the T.V. and see for yourself, all the people that ever said they'd do anything for you have failed)

(except one)

(maybe)

(maybe not)

He swallowed, turned the television on, and watched until all the old ghosts had fled his brain and it was dawn.

--

The next day he called in sick from work and drove back to the gas station, dropping two candy bars on the counter and watching Cindy ring them up with a smile.

She tried to start a conversation with him that time, something that a day before would have amused him but now felt more like an annoyance. He nodded at all the questions, the half-seductive looks, and turned and left.

Because Mello was already waiting for him in the driver's seat of his car, grinning sardonically. He was waiting there and Matt knew it, knew it like he knew his place in life, that he was cannon fodder, third-string backup, 4-F. But somehow, that didn't matter.

Because Mello had called him up.

"Remember me?" and Matt had felt his breath catch in his throat and cursed himself inside for ever doubting Mello would come.

Why should he have doubted? Mello had _promised_ him that much, five years before. And after all, Mello wasn't his mother, wasn't L. Wasn't going to disappoint him, not when the game was in its twilight hours and all the players were scrabbling so for a victory.

"I'm at that gas station you're always at. Go in, but buy something first. I'll be in the car once you get out. I'll tell you where we're going then. Hurry up, all right?"

(yes, finally, yes, thank you, you remembered, you remembered)

"All right."

And so it was no surprise, none, save a quickly smothered "what the _hell_ happened to your face" and the noticing, the amazing noticing that Mello still had his crucifix on his neck.

finis


End file.
